“The Supreme Court’s decision to rule Employment Tribunal fees unlawful is surprising; the government should think carefully how to respond. We do not want to go back to the situation where in excess of 200,000 claims were being made a year. By common consent many of these claims were weak and in some cases frivolous, but they were costly and time-consuming for employers to defend.

“If devising an acceptable fee system proves too difficult, we need to ensure that procedures are tightened to ensure all but the most serious cases are resolved through reconciliation at an early stage, and that where cases must come to tribunals they are dealt with expeditiously.

“More generally, the government should undertake a fundamental review of employment regulation to make it simpler and clearer, with fewer obstacles to job creation. Particularly with Brexit on the horizon, we must ensure that this does not lead to more unnecessary and harmful employment regulations. Unfortunately the drift for many years has been in the opposite direction.”

In June 2017 the IEA published ‘Working to Rule: The Damaging Economics of UK Employment Regulation’. To download this report please click here.

The mission of the Institute of Economic Affairs is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems and seeks to provide analysis in order to improve the public understanding of economics.

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